The dramatic growth of open source software development can now be seen in Internet-based, always-connected mobile and consumer products. Linaro will help accelerate this trend further by increasing investment on key open source projects and providing industry alignment with the community to deliver the best Linux-based products for the benefit of the consumer.

The main drive of Linaro seems to be developing advanced products that run using low-power ARM-based system-on-a-chip (SoC) solutions and Linux. That alone is not enough, however, as the iPhone has shown you need a strong development community around a device. So Linaro will also cater to the developer through software, hopefully making it an easy choice to develop apps for such devices.

How Linaro Works

Jane Silber, CEO of Ubuntu’s company Canonical, sums up the importance of Linaro best by saying:

The existence of Linaro will significantly simplify the process of making Linux-based consumer devices available to market. By standardising many of the core software components, companies can focus on creating great user experiences on embedded devices through to smart phones. Canonical is delighted to participate in what will be a significant driver of the success of Linux on ARM, in the consumer electronics market.

The first goal for Linaro is set for November 2010 when performance optimizations for the ARM Cortex-A processor family will be released.

Anyone wondering when those ARM-based tablets and netbooks are going to appear can now look to Linaro for answers. With the companies involved, the software promised, and the investment capital available, there’s no excuse for such devices not appearing in short order.

Linaro seems to be about more than just devices though, they want a development community around such devices. No developer or end user is going to complain about that. Companies such as ARM, IBM, and Freescale developing optimized kernels, solid middleware, and development tools, will only make app development easier. It should also take the overall quality of those apps up.

We may not see the real potential of Linaro until next year, but this bodes very well for the future of ARM-based devices such as tablets, netbooks, and smartphones.

Speak Your Mind

jqp

Ballmer was right, “Developers, developers, developers” is what it is all about if you want to foster widespread adoption. Linux on the desktop is the counter example. These companies have finally seen the light and are working together to promote a different outcome for mobile Linux. But is this enough to carve out anything more than their own unique niche?

Matthew Humphries

@jqp

If the result of this is the equivalent of an iPad running Android on ARM with double the battery life then I’d say yes it is enough. You can also use the same example for netbooks running Chrome OS/Windows, and the continuing push into smartphones.